Collateral Damage: The Elephant Named Grief

By now I'm sure you have walked into a room and felt as though something was going on in the room that no one wanted to or dared talk about. But the unspoken remained just as present as the individuals present. The older folks would sometimes say, "you can cut the tension with a knife", as though tension was a physical object. Truth is, feelings and emotions can sometimes be so strong their energy creates a sense of a personified presence in a room. Yet there are times when those feelings, though obvious, are ignored because it makes us confront such strong emotions face to face. Since emotions are originated in one's heart, I would say confronting one's state of heart can be quite a challenge for most of us if not all of us depending on how deep into our hearts we must travel to reach the root of the displayed emotion.

Do you remember? You could sense there was something that needed to be addressed but was intentionally avoided. Such awkwardness. Whether the opted silence was a result of not wanting to ruffle feathers of anger or not wanting to ignite pain. The elephant in the room remained evident as taboo staked its claim.

Depending upon the type of culture you were born into there are quite a few different approaches to dealing with topics that may be taboo to others. Ignoring the elephant in the room is not always the best idea because avoiding and deflecting as an attempt to ignore what makes one uncomfortable only prolongs the inevitable. At some point, one must deal with the elephant because it is occupying space that has crowded the atmosphere.

There is an elephant in the room of every country in the world. No one seems to want to talk about it, so we have chosen to continue in our pain. If we are all honest, we have a commonality that every race and ethnicity has had to continue to stand in a room with as though it does not exist. Our elephant is the pain of grief that we as a world have all had to live with daily during this era. Continuing to turn a blind eye toward the silent cries will not make the pain go away.

Grief is unlike us who classify ourselves to be superior to others based on labels we give them. Grief has no prejudice towards what we have prejudices towards. Country, race, ethnicity, creed, religion, political party, community, financial and social status, language, educational level, or the lack thereof are all irrelevant qualifications to avoiding grief.

Naturally, we are prone to only think of grief as the emotional state that is the result of experiencing the loss of another human. However, I've come to learn grief to be more than the loss of another person, but it can also be a result of experiencing loss in general. I believe that one can grieve anything that was held as a treasure. A patient who newly discovered terminal cancer can grieve what was once their perfect health. A providing husband can grieve a career that once gave stability to his family as he tells his wife they have lost their home and will have to move with no place to go, just as she can grieve the safety she once felt in her home. A mother may grieve the relationship she once had with a child who has decided to reject their upbringing of Christian morals and dignity, causing their relationship to become estranged.

Grief has many faces and comes in many shapes, sizes, and forms but at its core is a triggered emotion that is overwhelming and burdensome. It is hard to talk about, hard to think about, hard to be in a room with. Like an elephant, it takes up massive amounts of space in our lives upon arrival filling the rooms of our hearts with pain and sorrow. And just like fully grown elephants, the weight of grief can be very heavy. The good news is, though elephants are heavy they are still moveable objects....